{"id":475557,"date":"2026-02-15T01:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T01:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/475557\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T01:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T01:27:07","slug":"8-days-0-golds-canadas-olympic-program-heads-off-a-cliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/475557\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Days, 0 golds: Canada\u2019s Olympic program heads off a cliff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Laurent Dubreuil celebrates winning the bronze medal on the podium of the men’s 500 metres speed skating race.Luca Bruno\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Laurent Dubreuil won an Olympic bronze medal to pair with the silver he won in Beijing. <\/p>\n

His Games is over, but instead of going home he\u2019ll stay in Europe. That way he doesn\u2019t have to pay out of pocket to fly back for the world championships in Heerenveen, Netherlands in about a week\u2019s time. <\/p>\n

Once at that event, he\u2019ll stay with friends. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cheaper than a hotel,\u201d Debreuil said.<\/p>\n

He was just minutes off the podium when he had this remarkable conversation. <\/p>\n

You have to pay for everything on this trip?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Would a Dutch speed skater ever find themselves in such a position?<\/p>\n

\u201cNope.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the spring of 2024, Canadian Olympic Committee president David Shoemaker tried firing up the old klaxons about sports funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re on the brink of a crisis,\u201d Shoemaker & Co. said in a release. COC representatives have said this sort of thing so often over the years that most people have stopped listening. <\/p>\n

Three months after that warning, Canada had one of its best summer Olympics ever in Paris. Crisis averted. Except that Shoemaker hadn\u2019t said anything about 2024. <\/p>\n

Medals or not, at this Olympics it\u2019s good to be Canadian, say athletes<\/a><\/p>\n

What he\u2019d said, to the Globe\u2019s Simon Houpt<\/a>, was that while the Paris Games would be fine, \u201cthere are certainly some winter sports that are in financial dire straits, and two years from now, unless something were to change, they\u2019ve got real problems.\u201d It\u2019s now two years from then and guess what? Canada has some problems.<\/p>\n

These problems aren\u2019t \u201creal\u201d until this Olympics is over. If Canada beats the U.S.A. for two hockey golds on the final weekend, the resultant national glee will paper over setbacks elsewhere. But it\u2019s clear that if Canada\u2019s Olympic program isn\u2019t yet in the terminal decline Shoemaker warned about, it\u2019s trending in that direction. <\/p>\n

At the completion of Saturday\u2019s events, Canada stands on eight medals. That\u2019s five fewer than we had at this point in Beijing. <\/p>\n

None of those eight is gold. By the IOC\u2019s official tally, Canada sits 18th on the medal table. We were meant to be gunning for top five. In a perfect world, top three. It is now difficult, verging on impossible, to see how that would happen. <\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s all-over-the-map Olympics went too far<\/a><\/p>\n

Luck plays some role in this. It seems vaguely ridiculous that Mika\u00ebl Kingsbury tied for the top score in his best event and somehow came second. That said, when disappointment becomes a pattern, it\u2019s not luck. It\u2019s you. <\/p>\n

If you do what most people do during an Olympics \u2013 choose to highlight the best moments \u2013 things can feel fine. <\/p>\n

Dubreuil surprised some with that bronze, including, one suspects, himself. By his own telling, he was left in the dust by the 21-year-old American and 22-year-old Dutchman who finished ahead of him.<\/p>\n

Three days earlier, he finished 8th in the 1,000-metre event. He\u2019d been second in Beijing. <\/p>\n

That means Dubreuil, who is 33 and rounding out his career, is actually down one aggregate step on the podium from Beijing to Milan. No younger Canadian has convincingly shown here that they are about to take over his medal-contending duties. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Canada’s William Dandjinou competes in the men’s 1500m short-track speed skating final on Saturday.Nathan Denette\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Later on Saturday night, William Dandjinou \u2013 the would-be Canadian star of these Games \u2013 had another tough night at the Milano Ice Skating Arena. He finished fifth in a chaotic 1,500-metre short-track final. That\u2019s two non-medal finishes in races he\u2019d hoped to win. <\/p>\n

When everyone was making their \u2018Canada\u2019s still in there with the very best of them\u2019 predictions, it was assumed Dandjinou would clean up here. He hasn\u2019t, making the whole thing more of a quick tidy. <\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the geezer factor. If you count teams as individuals, the average age of Canadian medalists thus far is 29.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not ancient, but it\u2019s a long way from fresh-faced. It suggests a program on the far edge of its prime, and just about to go off a cliff. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s the answer to this? I don\u2019t know. What would you like the answer to be? It\u2019s up to you. <\/p>\n

There are two ways to go about this. Leave the COC and its component organizations to raise their own money from the private sector, which they do. The other is to get government more involved than it already is to push funding over the top. <\/p>\n

This was a national priority before Vancouver 2010, and resulted in all of our Olympic teams moving up a level. For the better part of 20 years, we got used to being among the best. Now that swell is beginning to recede. <\/p>\n

Since Vancouver, Canada\u2019s gold medal totals in winter Games have gone 14, 10, 11, 4 and, currently, 0. <\/p>\n

Analysis: Time is running out for Canada\u2019s women\u2019s hockey team to clean up its game<\/a><\/p>\n

This is no disaster. There\u2019s no rule that says a country doesn\u2019t matter if it doesn\u2019t win Olympic events. Places like Spain and Brazil don\u2019t put the Olympics at the centre of their cultural project, and their sense of national identity seems to be fine. <\/p>\n

The question we might ask ourselves going forward is, \u2018If not the Olympics, then what?\u2019 <\/p>\n

What else performs the same function as the bi-annual Games in bringing the country together, and has the same impact in bolstering our sense of pride?<\/p>\n

Brazil and Spain have the World Cup. We have, what? The 4 Nations Face-Off? The Calgary Stampede? The Toronto Film Festival?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have anything else like the Olympics. Maybe we should think about a replacement before we let something that\u2019s working run to seed. It\u2019s totally reasonable to think the taxpayer shouldn\u2019t be the one paying for Laurent Dubreuil\u2019s hotel room in Holland. <\/p>\n

But if so, did it make you feel good \u2013 feel Canadian \u2013 watching him get up on the podium in our colours on Saturday? Did you share that moment with someone you love? Did it make you feel more connected to your country and the people who live in it?<\/p>\n

Because you can\u2019t think that, and then expect to have all those other things as well.<\/p>\n

Follow our live daily coverage<\/a> of the Winter Games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Laurent Dubreuil celebrates winning the bronze medal on the podium of the men’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,2922,4963,187287,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-475557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-noastack","11":"tag-olympics","12":"tag-olympicstaff","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}